Comments on: Somewhere near Gironville, 5/17/1918 http://worldwar1letters.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/somewhere-near-gironville-5171918/ Letters Home from a Yankee Doughboy 1916-1919 Sat, 18 May 2013 15:05:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Myscha Aiken http://worldwar1letters.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/somewhere-near-gironville-5171918/#comment-451 Tue, 19 May 2009 15:13:28 +0000 http://worldwar1letters.wordpress.com/?p=4235#comment-451 Your mention of the dud reminded me of an “Old Bill” drawing in one of Bruce Bairnsfather’s “Fragments from France”, do you get anything like that out where you are?
Anyway, there was Old Bill sat watching a youngster nervously defusing a dud and saying something along the lines of “Give it a good ‘ard ‘un. You can usually ‘ear ‘em tickin’ if they’s going to go off”

]]> By: worldwar1letters http://worldwar1letters.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/somewhere-near-gironville-5171918/#comment-439 Wed, 13 May 2009 12:14:45 +0000 http://worldwar1letters.wordpress.com/?p=4235#comment-439 Dear Readers:
Here Sam reveals the random nature of the war in an off-handed way so as not to alarm his family. The German dud he speaks of landed only a few feet away, hence “I won’t say anything about the chance.” Had the shell not been a dud, this letter and all that follow never would have been written.

Regards,
REL

]]>